There are infinite universes… and Joanne dies in most of them

Today I fire up Infinite Universe, by Tin Man Games who makes Gamebook Adventures. I have played their first 12 adventures set in the swords-and-sorcery world of Orlandes, and despite gripes about the combat system have found them a lot of fun. Infinite Universe, though, is a sci-fi adventure. So let’s check it out…

I’ll be a lady, and her name is automatically set to Joanne. I’ll find out on later playthroughs that this is to make room for a lot of jokes about my being a “regular joe” I roll 43 health and 11 fitness. Aww yeah!

I wake up with some guy standing over me, and over two dead bodies, holding a helmet. Coincidentally, my memory has been erased. Is there a connection here? Nah! Seems legit.

He leads me past a barricade and down a hallway, where he meets with a cloaked alien who sneaks him some grenades. Okay, this guy is starting to sound a bit shady. But hey, I don’t remember anything so maybe this is normal? He then has me open a door, throw in a smoke grenade, and just start shooting everybody in the room. Our brave hero here doesn’t have any internal sense of right and wrong, so… okay!

It doesn’t go so well. A few truly unfortunate dice rolls later, and I’m sizzlefried with lazors. … Which makes it doubly surprising when I wake up in a stimsim suit, where my prospective employer says that the training sim didn’t go so well, but that’s okay because we learned something today.

The next 20+ pages are expositional monologue. I hear about the earth alliance (yay earth, the good guys of the galaxy, woot!) and the rebel freedom fighters who want to overthrow it (should that say terrorists? I’m not to judge). And that I’m the chosen one by an Oracle (seriously?) to end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy! “I’ll never join you!” I shout. But you get 1000 credits, a lazer gun, and skillsoft upgrades for your brain. “Sounds awesome!” I amend.